Standley Chasm - photos

When I in Awesome Wonder

Standley Chasm will speak for itself in the following post. I will but introduce it/her.

Ida Standley was the first school teacher in Alice Springs. That was in1914. She was hired to teach the children of European descent, but took it on herself to also teach the mixed-race Aboriginal children who happened to be taken from their parents by the government and housed in "The Bungalo" -a corrugated iron shed.
She would teach the white children in the mornings and the half-caste children in the afternoons. She was also made matron of The Bungalo where she supervised up to 63 children from infants to age sixteen, all night.
She was about my age when she got here and, understandably, about dead when she left.
Her last year here was spent in a tent at Jay Creek (about 30K from Alice) overseeing an Aboriginal school being built. She was about 60 then.
She was the first whitefella to see Standley Chasm and I bet she said, "WOW."

Standley Chasm is like a standing ovation for God. They say it is its most spectacular an hour either side of noon. We were there about 3-4 p.m. Had it been any more spectacular, we would all be unconscious.

It is unusually moist and drippy with ferns and cool, shady hollows all along a small stream.
There are cycads. Those are the plants that look like someone lopped the top off a palm tree and stuck it in the ground; only they're much stiffer than palms and are so ancient, dinosaurs ate them.

I'll be quiet now and let you look at the pictures. I needed to upload them tonight as we leave for 8 days in Canberra (CAN-bruh) and Sydney tomorrow morning. I'm sure we'll have lots more to share after that. It's our first trip away since we got here last August. This will be good.

At the Alice Airport...

Thomas knows he has to carry his microscope with two hands because it cost fifty dollars.

NASA (et al) trust a balloon made of plastic wrap and a hired crane to carry a bajillion dollars of telescope equipment.

Wait till their mothers find out!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG8YLHiG_ZI&feature=related

P.S. That's a guy Tom works with running for his life.